


Clear & Quiet

by Jenwryn



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, I haven't written in years, M/M, Send help etc, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, What am I doing?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-08-21
Packaged: 2019-06-30 14:24:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15753531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: In which soulmates are a thing, and Quentin can't shield his mind for shit. Maybe.





	Clear & Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> Three and a half loooong years without writing a word, and I reappear with a fucking soulmate AU? Okay. So, that's happening. May the gods have mercy on my heathen soul, etc, etc. (Unbeta'd, because I know literally no-one who would want to read this shit.)

It's such a fucking _moment_ , when he hears it: 'Sorry', mumbled, muttered, awkwardly dropped, like Penny's heard it said ten thousand times before. It's not as though it's an uncommon word, not as though the soulmark on his ribs is the stuff of Shakespeare, but there's a buzz that comes with it, deep and low, reverberating in Penny's stomach. _That_ has never happened before, not even a little bit, and he might almost have missed it, what with the weirdness of a magical exam he'd had no idea he was going to be sitting, but Penny's a perceptive kind of guy. Penny notices things. Penny feels things, and he feels this, all of this, like a small wave rolling in his gut.

And he doesn't let a bit of it show, not a drop, because holy fuck this skinny white boy? Who just spent way too long struggling to _take off his goddamn sweater?_

Yeah. No. No thanks.

'I know that, I know that,' breathes the guy. His handwriting, as he begins to scrawl words across his page, is achingly familiar. 

This. This kid in a _really_ fugly tie. This is meant to be Penny's soulmate? The other half of Penny's proverbial coin?

Penny looks at the exam paper in front of him, scans it, as though he can see anything at all above the buzz in his belly, but there's no sign that the guy beside him has noticed anything beyond the, well, other considerable weirdness all around them. Penny hasn't spoken to him, of course, and so why would he? And so -- and so, Penny starts answering papered questions.

Exams, Penny can do. Soulmates... that can go fuck itself.

Penny blocks out the noise of the room, the noise of Sorry Guy's freaking-out fever-pitch brain, and begins to write. 

#

Soulmates are... a Thing. An established, every day, observable thing. Some people have them, many people don't, and while the world of magic might be hidden from the mainstream cultures of the world, soulmates are common knowledge. Once upon a time, Penny knows from reading (because, hell, he was a little kid with a soulmark on him, how was he not going to book up on that), one's soulmate was generally found within the geographic area a person was born into. Now, with the opening up of the globe, with aeroplanes and cellphones and men on the goddamn moon, soulmates can be anywhere. It should have meant that people came together globally -- there are even apps for it, like grindr or tinder but for soulmate hunters, poorly lit images of people's soulmarks, in the hope that that might somehow connect them with each other, which is, of course, utterly fucking blindingly illogical -- but really it just means that more people seem to stumble through life without ever meeting their other half. More and more people are born without them, too, like they're biologically going out of style, or perhaps because the marks aren't meeting up with their answering matches anymore. Scientists like to argue about it; theologians like to sit around with their thumbs up their arses debating the free will of it all; and the media swings between soppy adoration and subverting the trope. The world spins on, anyway, whether people meet up or not.

Penny had had great romantic hopes, as a child, never mind the simplicity of his mark; his parents, for all their many other faults, bore each others' marks, after all, and were disgustingly, embarrassingly, in love with each other, and so why wouldn't he be as fortunate? As he grew older though, a brown boy in Florida, his mind becoming increasingly polluted with the toxic waste of other folks' thoughts, Penny had started to wonder whether happiness really was that common an ending.

Some peoples' soulmates were strictly platonic.

Some peoples' soulmates didn't match them back; a one-sided curse with just one mark between two souls.

And other peoples' soulmates were so buried in dogmas of hate and repression that they would rather burn their mark off them, than act on them, when they realised they shared them with someone of the same gender. That, in particular, stung, as Penny began to realise that he didn't personally care much either way: gender didn't bother him. People did. 

People, child Penny learnt, overwhelmingly at least, _sucked_.

#

Quentin Coldwater sucks. 

His brain is a loose mess, like someone had kicked over some nana's sewing box, all the threads and the buttons and the needles muddled up in a giant stupid pile. Not that Quentin is stupid -- he isn't, Penny gets that -- but it's so painful to look at, so _pitiful_ , and probably impossible to tidy. And the self-esteem issues, goddamn. The idea of his soulmate being someone so fucking self-loathing annoys the shit out of Penny. 

Penny feels annoyed a lot, lately.

Annoyed, when he finds out they're roommates.

Annoyed, when he realises that this manbaby, this magical babe-in-the-woods, still can't shield his mind for shit.

Outraged, when Quentin doesn't react at all to the first words Penny says to him directly -- the first stupid, stupid words, 'What up, Roomie?', like Penny's just goading their connection into being dumb, so dumb, like the dumb word Quentin has left below Penny's ribs. And Quentin _doesn't even react_ , doesn't even reply, just starts accusing him of stealing children's books. 

Penny goes on the defense -- 'Why do you have all that nerd-boy dragon porn shit anyway, what are you, twelve?' -- and is left alone, before he knows it, with Quentin whisked away by his shiny new friends.

#

Penny shoves Quentin against walls, against doors, against trees; angry at his very existence, and enjoying the startled silence that his actions grant him -- the reprieve from Quentin's screaming rabbit brain -- even if he also hates the tingle they send up his own arms, and the fact that Quentin doesn't even seem to know it's happening.

Fucking soulmarks, and fucking Penny, Penny, who gets the lousy draw of an obvious non-reciprication, the most bullshit scenario of them all: Quentin is his soulmate, but he is not Quentin's.

# 

Here's the thing, though: life goes on.

Penny fucks Kady, because Kady is _awesome_ , and because Kady doesn't care who the mark beneath his ribs belongs to. She's far less interested in that than she is in his tattoos, which she likes, in contrast, to trace with her clever fingertips and with her clever, clever tongue. Kady is funny, and Kady is warm, and the sex is fanstastic, sinking deep inside of her body while her mind remains comfortably closed to him. Kady is safe -- though he knows she would laugh in his face if he ever said that to her -- but yeah, ostensibly wild Kady? She's a solid choice, an easy choice, and fucking her, kissing her, even caring about her -- none of those things make Penny feel like his metaphorical boat's about to be cast onto the metaphorical rocks. Kady's a friend, and the benefits are awesome.

He avoids Quentin when he can, is an asshole to him when he can't; and despairs at the Taylor Swift and Imagine Dragons and Iron-and-motherfucking-Wine that seep out of his brain, spilling across Penny from the other side of the campus. 

He is relieved when they no longer share a room.

#

The thing is, though: it doesn't get better.

#

Penny is subjected, in no specific order, to homework, to tedium, to moping, to memories, to popper practise, to panic attacks, to the dark crawl of depression. Penny is subjected to a racist caricature of himself, once -- Quentin, in his defense, later tries to explain, stammering, about how that was just another form of Quentin himself, not his view of Penny, and Penny knows that _you dumb shit it's not like racism isn't hard to hear_ , but the principle of it still smarts, especially since you wouldn't know Quentin ever had another thought about him, apart from that. 

Penny is subjected to Quentin daydreaming about Alice's lovely tits. Penny is subjected to Quentin daydreaming about Eliot's lovely ass. Penny is subjected to the realisation that Quentin is just as bi as Penny is, and doesn't that bite ( _if Quentin had've had Penny's soulmark upon him, in answer to Penny's, they might have fit together after all_ , is definitely not something Penny dwells upon at the hellish hour of three in the morning).

If Quentin ever thinks about Penny, Penny doesn't hear it, ergo: Penny is never thought about. 

Penny distracts, deflects, and pretends that's not the worst of it.

#

On the other hand, Quentin thinks about every thing else.

'What the _fuck_ do I have to do to get you to fucking. shut. up?' shouts Penny, and it's ridiculous, his life is truly ridiculous, because he can see it coming even as he says it, an attack of a _moment_ all over again, because Quentin is just standing there, back up against the brick of a wall where Penny has shoved him. Quentin is just standing there, staring at him, and Quentin's eyes are all exhausted and anxious and freaking out, but his jaw is jutted just a bit like defiance, and Penny says, 'Oh, fuck it,' and leans his own head down, presses his mouth to Quentin's, and kisses him.

Quentin flails against him, hands scrabbling at Penny's shoulders, Penny's vest, Penny's scarf, and then Quentin's fingers are taking hold, and gripping hard. 

Quentin is kissing him back. 

Quentin is kissing him back, and Penny feels the flare of his soulmark, burning hot, hotter than it did when Quentin first spoke to him, and then Quentin's skin is burning beneath Penny's right hand, too; beneath Penny's hold on the nape of Quentin's neck. The searing heat of an answering mark.

Penny jerks back, spluttering. 'What the fuck.'

Quentin blinks, deer in the headlights. 'I... uh? Uh, you kissed me? Isn't that my line, I--?'

Penny grabs Quentin's collar and spins him around, fisting Quentin's floppy hair out of the way with one hand and pushing down his collar with the other. And there they are, dark and strong, and clear in Penny's own handwriting, _What up, Roomie?_

It's like something out of a cartoon, such a stupid. fucking. line., but it's Penny's, and it's there, permanent, permanent as a tatt or a heart attack, and the heat of it coils Penny's guts as he rests his fingers against it. Strokes. 

Quentin trembles when he does; makes a gasping noise. 

Penny stares. 

He manhandles Quentin back around, to face him again, and then stares some more. 

Eventually, still gripping Quentin's shirt, he manages, 'You mother _fucker_. What is your damage?'

'My... my damage,' repeats Quentin, monotone, and then fists his hands back into the front of Penny's clothes, and he actually looks angry. ' _My_ damage? You're the one always shoving me against things with a rageface on. And what did you expect me to do, when I realised -- tell you? Confront you? You, fucking... built like that... looking like that... and just...' Quentin trails off, waving his hands around to indicate the entirety of Penny. 'You?! Why the hell would I tell _you_ that I've got your soulmark on me? Why in the fuck would I ever think that would be reciprocated, let alone appreciated?'

Reciprocated. Appreciated. The words batter at Penny's anger, fan it, but he breathes, deep, intentionally, grounding his hold on Quentin into something gentler. 

'Jesus fuck, Coldwater,' he says, and lets his face rest, suddenly bone-deep fatigued, against Quentin's forehead. 'I thought you didn't have a mark. You never said.'

'Pot,' says Quentin, probably rolling his eyes, not that Penny can tell from the angle. He points at his own chest as he says it, then shoves at Penny and says, 'Kettle.'

Penny wants to kiss the dweeb, wants to punch him, wants to gather him up and bone the fuck him.

And then he pauses, nonplussed. 'How the _fuck_ did you keep that from me? You can't ward your mind for shit.'

Quentin won't look at him, hides beneath his hair. He says, 'I can a little. Enough for what really mattered.'

'You spewed your fucking fantasies about _Eliot_ at me, but not the fact that you knew I was your soulmate.'

And this is not real, this is really not real, this is some daytime soap drama crap that his aunties would watch.

Quentin is looking angry again. Shame, fear, rage, desperation, are bleeding out of him like mental tears, and Penny suddenly gets it, suddenly gets it, and how has he been so dumb not to get it before now.

'You don't think you're worth a soulmate,' he says, deadpan and dead frustrated.

Quentin won't look at him.

Penny lets him go, and magics himself away. 

#

It's three long days before there's a knock on Penny's bedroom door. He grunts, gets it, takes one look at Quentin's face and says, 'Oh hell no,' and -- before Quentin can muster up more than a flushed look of pissed-off embarrassment and rejection -- Penny has him by the shoulders and has whisked them through the wards of the Cottage and into Quentin's own room.

Quentin stumbles when Penny lets him go but, before he can start bleating out the hurt he's radiating, Penny says, 'I am not having this conversation in a building full of psychics.'

Quentin subdues, mentally, and his body language relaxes a little. 'Oh,' he says, 'Oh, I guess so.'

Neither of them says anything, after that.

Penny looks around him, taking in the messy bed, and the muddled desk, and the three different editions of the _Fillory and Further_ series tucked neatly into place in Quentin's alphabetised bookshelves.

Fuck it, they are both too shit at this crap.

And so Penny steps forwards, trying not to manhandle this time, looking to Quentin for permission, which Quentin offers silently, searchingly, lifting his mouth towards Penny's.

Penny leans down to meet him, and kisses.

Quentin's mouth is warm, and tentative, but he doesn't kiss half as bad as Penny had thought he might, and, when he finally finds the balls to shift his body, Quentin slots himself, hot and close, against Penny's chest. Quentin slides his hands against him, along him, slips them up beneath Penny's shirt and rests one, like a guided missile, against the mark at Penny's ribs. When the heat flows between them, more sedately this time, but just as steady, it's Quentin who breaks their kiss, glancing questioningly from Penny's face to his clothes. 

Penny rolls his eyes, and pulls the shirt off over his head in one easy movement. 

Quentin gnaws his bottom lip, says, 'Christ, that looks so lame.'

'You _are_ lame,' says Penny, but it's habit, it's autopilot, and he wants to punch himself in the face the moment it slips out, because Quentin is hurt again and goddamnit how fucking damaged does he have to be. Penny would officially like to have a personal word with every single motherfucker who worked to make Quentin the way he is, starting with his parents and his supposed childhood friends. 'Hey,' he says, quickly, 'Look, I'm... I'm a dick, I'm an asshole, you get that? You know that. But I... I don't think you're lame, alright? I think you're smart, and you're... you're brave. You've constantly got your problems laying all over the pavement for me to feel, okay, Quentin? So it's not like I don't know about your chemical warfare going on in there. I've... I've seen your madhouse. And you're brave, you know? Because you're still here. You're still... you're still _Quentin_.'

Quentin swallows, nods, doesn't answer. He has one of his hands back on Penny's soulmark; the other rests carefully, so carefully, upon the bare skin of Penny's side, as though Penny might be the fragile one. The thumb scrapes the band of Penny's jeans. Quentin says, 'Soulmates don't have to be... they aren't all about... romance. You don't have to kiss me. You don't have to... pityfuck me, or something.'

Penny makes a noise that might be a roar, an expulsion of air and aggravation. 'Oh for fuck's sake, how do you even-- do you even hear yourself? Do you even _see_ yourself?'

Penny kisses him again, hard and rough and full of everything he cannot say, everything he's nowhere near ready to say. Penny pulls away, grunts, 'Does that feel like pity? Have you ever thought that maybe I just _want_ to fuck you?

It's not a lie, Penny realises. He really does.

Quentin makes a noise like a whine, hands fluttering against him, and there's no hurt there now -- doubt, yes, but tiny patches of hope too, of wonder, as Quentin holds tight, as Quentin's palms search the planes of Penny's chest, of his arms, of his soulmark and his tattoos.

'Do not expect roses,' mumbles Penny, against Quentin's neck. 'Or, like, sonnets or shit.'

Quentin laughs, a real laugh, happy and-- holy shit, Penny wants more of _that_. Wants to make that sound, those feelings, a stronger part of Quentin's mental landscape.

Quentin is Quentin, though, and his thoughts are bleeding out, now, more of them the more they touch. And there they are, the hidden ones: Penny can see the mental shield where Quentin had bound it so tightly, can see it melting, can see all of Quentin's fears, can see how Quentin had tried so hard to make something with Alice, how Quentin had tried so hard to do what he had expected from his own life, had tried so very hard to find happiness where he had thought it ought to lie. He can see Quentin looking at him, now, see the jolt that he had felt the first time Penny had spoken to him, can see how Quentin had tried to deflect it with his otherwise legitimate concern about the Fillory notebook. He can see Quentin watching him, in class, on campus, can see Quentin fantasizing about—

Penny is usually pretty chill with this shit, but he needs to take a moment here, feels his mind reeling beneath the onslaught of all the stuff that Quentin had, actually, incredibly, holy crap, managed to keep from him.

Quentin, wanting to fuck him. 

Quentin, having _feelings_ for him. Feelings for Penny.

'I'm going to be honest with you,' Penny grinds out, one of his hands in Quentin's hair, one on Quentin's arse; Quentin's mouth moving against his jaw. 'A big part of me really wants to run right now.'

'Yeah,' says Quentin, and it's not a question. He knows. He gets it.

'Yeah,' says Penny, and he kisses Quentin instead, his hips jerking as Quentin undoes Penny's jeans, as Quentin shoves his hand in Penny's pants and strokes his dick, and, yeah, yeah, they're doing this, stumbling together, the back of Penny's knees hitting Quentin's bed, and Quentin toppling down against him. Which, actually, kind of hurts for a moment, and then Quentin is stroking their dicks together, running open-mouthed kisses against Penny's chest, and okay so maybe Quentin really wasn't deserving of all the virgin jokes, and maybe that was something else he'd been keeping locked away. 

Penny goes with it, sinks into the sensations: Quentin's mouth, Quentin's hands, Quentin's body -- Quentin's mind -- pressed against him, hot in the still, warm air of Quentin's room, the weight of their soulmarks bright between them, and Penny doesn't bother being annoyed, anymore, because maybe he _likes_ skinny nerd boys, maybe he has a thing for them, and he comes as Quentin does, Quentin's mind clear and quiet and joyous.


End file.
